


don't you feel you're a slave to time?

by citadelofswords



Category: Ars Paradoxica (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Future Fic, Gen, Implied Immortality, No Dialogue, Time Fuckery, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 12:03:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8248090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: (jet lag, noun, “a physiological condition which results from alterations to the body's circadian rhythms resulting from rapid long-distance trans-meridian (east–west or west–east) travel on high-speed aircraft” coined sometime in 1966.)Anthony Partridge has never been on a plane and if this is what it feels like he never intends on being on a plane ever.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Meteor by Ashes Of Soma.

Somewhere in God knows where, Anthony Partridge deals with what Sally calls “jet lag,” a phenomenon that gives him a headache if he even thinks about it too long.

(jet lag, noun, “a physiological condition which results from alterations to the body's circadian rhythms resulting from rapid long-distance trans-meridian (east–west or west–east) travel on high-speed aircraft” coined sometime in 1966.)

Anthony Partridge has never been on a plane and if this is what it feels like he never intends on being on a plane ever.

He is no longer in the Blackroom. He does not want to think about why he is no longer in the Blackroom. He does not want to think about Bill Donovan or Chet Whickman or Hank Cornish or literally anyone. What he wants to think about is sleep, except Sally’s tiny clock says it’s 0300 hours and his eyes are wide open, so, so much for that plan.

Partridge finds himself thinking of Helen and firmly pushes those thoughts away, only to look over to his side and see Sally Grissom asleep in the bed next to him, and that is a whole other can of worms he does not want to open. Once upon a time in 1943 Sally Grissom was the worst thing that ever happened to him and now they’re in a dingy motel lit only by a bright neon pink sign outside and she’s asleep and he’s watching her sleep and that should probably feel creepier but it doesn’t matter since Partridge is not thinking about it.

It’s 1993, he thinks, or maybe it’s 1943, maybe it’s 2023 for all he knows, what is time anyway— he doesn’t look much different than he did when they shoved him in the Blackroom and erased his existence. Sally doesn’t look much different either. He wonders if that’s a consequence of time traveling so much. He wonders if she started working for ODAR like he told her to. Did he tell her to? When did he do that? 

The trouble with the Blackroom, he supposes, is that time has no meaning to him anymore. It was always so black there that his body clock set itself to twelve hour cycles (or the perception of hours in a place where the only light source was a time anomaly named Sally Grissom who glowed like a never-dying star) and that’s probably why his body is, as she put it, jetlagged, since it hasn’t had to deal with the sunrise and sunset in what he's perceived as roughly fifty years.

(He’s trying not to think about it, but he’s drawn to the thought of watching the time anomaly pulse as though it was breathing, in five, out seven, and he remembers trying to approach it and it always being just out of reach, and wasn’t it just his luck that the one person who he loved who didn’t think he was a colossal fuck-up was out of his reach? but then he heard her voice and he spent five minutes with tears rolling down his cheeks, listening to her message over and over, and the time anomaly winking at him somewhere just behind him—

and he remembers the day it started fading and he dove for it to try, just one more time, to try to hold her light in his hands, but she winked out and he was plunged into pitch darkness and he panicked worse than the time that Helen left, would leave, what is time, leaves him—)

but here is Sally Grissom, and five hours ago he heard her voice with nothing but air in between them and nearly broke down crying because oh god it was her wasn’t it and he wasn’t in the Blackroom anymore

— maybe he was dreaming, maybe he’s still dreaming, maybe this is one of ODAR’s tricks and Sally is dead just like the time anomaly and tomorrow he’ll wake up in the Blackroom waiting for a message from her that’ll never come

— maybe he never was in the Blackroom to begin with and it was all just a big lie (he’ll know in twenty years or maybe tomorrow or maybe two months ago when he tries to find a Stephen King book)

— but for right now Sally Grissom is breathing in the bed next to him and when he looks at her time seems to make sense again. 

And it’s not because she’s beautiful when she sleeps, since Sally Grissom _is_ beautiful, but when she sleeps her mouth kind of hangs open a little bit and she snores something awful and Partridge knows her hair is going to look like a bird’s nest in the morning. 

(They’d gotten this motel room that was only lit by a pink neon sign outside and it only had one bed. Sally had insisted he take it since he’d been in the Blackroom for fifty years, and he was still a proper gentleman, or at least he remembered his manners, and had told her to take it, and they’d wound up just sharing it because time may be fucked up but their bones certainly felt the strain.)

So it’s not Sally being beautiful or anything. It’s just Sally being Sally, an impossible anomaly that somehow managed to be the kindest, strangest, smartest woman he’s known (when you count all three things together, since he still thinks Helen is the best woman he’s ever known and he has long ago understood why she left him). 

He looks at Sally and he sees someone who’s seen much more than they probably should have. Her entire life was yanked out from under her and she just built herself a new one from what was around her. Leave it to a scientist to figure out how to make that work. She lost her friends and her job twice over and still, still somehow found it in her to crack terrible jokes the entire time they drove as fast and far from the Blackroom as they could go.

(In his hands is the knitted blanket he’d found in one of the crates, wrapped around some fancy equipment. Maybe the lack of time passing had allowed it to remain as warm as one of Sally’s hugs, but in this motel room it feels just like a normal blanket—)

Partridge feels a hand rest on top of his, where it rests on his chest, and looks over. Sally still seems to be dead asleep, but she’s rolled over to face him and her arm has landed across his chest, slight hand over his heart, and he exhales.

Somewhere in the room, a clock is ticking. Partridge has never heard a more beautiful sound than that of time moving forwards, properly, the way it’s meant to.

In the morning, he will open his eyes and the first thing he’ll see in the weak light will be Sally’s eyes, wide and alert, but when she sees him they’ll crinkle at the edges the way they do when she smiles, and he’ll know that he isn’t the only one who thought the previous afternoon was a dream. But that is tomorrow, and time flows linearly for him now, and right now Sally’s hand is tightening on the folds of his shirt and her eyebrows are furrowing and Partridge turns his hand over and turns on his side. Sally’s fingers tangle in his as he drops their hands on the bed between them and he closes his eyes. With Sally's hand in his, he thinks, as his eyes droop closed, he could face the world 

With Sally’s hand in his, he thinks about sleep and it comes easily.

**Author's Note:**

> I just want Anthony Partridge to be happy goddamnit.
> 
> [my tumblr](http://citadelofswords.tumblr.com/)


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